Diary of a Croatian larper

Happy Easter weekend folks - and whether you celebrate or not, here's a special present for you:  Izgon RPG . It's a Fate Accelerated-based tabletop RPG system, based on a realistic, pervasive ARG-ish larp, but it also has a larp conversion into another style of larp (a homebrew Fate conversion with alternative resolution system, not unlike Vampire). Larpception! OK, it's not really finished - but what is written is publicly available now, and playable so you may consider it a form of open beta. If you're a theorycrafter, playtester or just an opinionated person and you have any feedback on it, it would be most welcome. And if you have any content submissions - especially adventures or such - they would be especially welcome. Speaking of larps, to the left you'll find a photo from yesterday's Elysium 11. I was not able to attend it due to a family situation (which makes it... first Croatian Vampire larp so far I didn't attend), but it was visited by ...

If you noticed this blog got a bit more active lately, it's because... well, everything's got a bit more active lately. Last evening was Elysium 8 - last Vampire larp for the month. 17 players took part in it - despite the fact most have already reached the XP cap for the month, and only 2 players got any XP from it. It was a nice social event which I forgot to take a photo of - but imagine a lot of people sitting in a bar as in other Elysium larps and that would be it :) The Elysium schedule for April has been published. Elysium 9 is on Tuesday, April 1st. Then it will be every 8 days, to fulfill the April schedule - so Elysium 10 will be on Wednesday, April 9th, Elysium 11 will be on Thursday, April 17th, and Elysium 12 will be on Friday, April 25th. Yeah, that will be the first Friday Elysium . So that would bring April to four Elysium events... plus a major Camarilla Agram event on April 12th. Five Vampire larps, just as it was this month :) But this month...

This June will bring Battle of the Nations - the world's biggest medieval tournament - to Trogir in Croatia. Due to that fact, Terra Nova 2014 - which was scheduled on the same date - has been rescheduled again, a week after. Since Thursday, June 19, is a non-working day in Croatia, there will be a possibility to arrive early to the event. Sign-ups have also been opened, and they're available here . The next larp in Croatia is Camarilla Agram Elysium 8  this Thursday. This weekend will also be interesting, as it will feature Istrakon 2014 , one of the biggest sci-fi conventions in Croatia. It's still unknown if there's any larping program, but there will certainly be some larpers there. Speaking of conventions, the society Zlati Goblin from Maribor, Slovenia is organizing GobliCon - the only Slovenian gaming convention - on April 18 and 19. It will be located in Maribor, and it will feature some larp content as presented by some of the Slovenian larpers I v...

Please, reshare this post on your social networks to help spread awareness of what larp is! Thanks! :) Recently I've been asked "what's that thing that you do" by more than one person in my friend list. And I have to admit, the description on my blog is a bit lacking. It may be because I target my writing more towards the existing larpers than towards new, potential larpers? It might be so, but Wikipedia article is also not too helpful. Larping can sometimes be difficult to describe. Here's a recent video from Stephanie from USA talking about the very same thing. But back to the business: what is actually larp? Here's a video that I often link to people, simply because it's awesome. But it's in Czech, so you might need to open the full youtube screen to turn on the subtitles. Fantasy larp is probably the most popular around. Kristin from USA does a very detailed introduction to such larp styles: Soon you can also expect a web series...

LarpCraft (remember the interview we had with Ryan?) started a series of interviews with some of their players, talking about how they started doing larp, what they like and a lot more. It's a very nicely thought out series with three videos released so far, though I wouldn't be surprised if more of them pop up later on their channel . Check them out: Nice, professionally done, with nice stories to tell - what do you think about them? Leave a comment below. There have been some similar videos below - however, usually they were made independently by vloggers. E.g. here's one from Larp Girl . It even inspired me to make one of my own - so behold my first video entry - or whatever my cheap webcam has done of it. Thoughts? Opinions? Want to share your story? Leave a comment.

This summer has been quite interesting, not only considering Croatian larp development, but other larp projects that were happening around. One of the more visible ones is Realm of LARP, a series about a party of larpers produced in USA's Seventh Kingdom IGE group. Yesterday the last episode of the first season of this English-language show that's been following us for the entire summer came out. Looking at the way it's both played and filmed is interesting. It's quite different from Croatian LARP, it looks more railroaded and gamey but there are certainly some interesting ideas that could be seen. Here are all 11 episodes of the show's first season (hopefully, not the last). Enjoy!

From time to time we did cover some info on other countries' larp scenes. Most Croats have heard about what larping is like in other countries, such as Serbia, USA, Germany, nordic countries, etc. But, nobody here spoke about Swiss larp scene. A French larper Thomas B. who lives in Switzerland published this very nice presentation about Swiss larp scene that was originally done on Knudepunkt 2011. Well actually there are two separate and distinct Swiss larp scenes, German and French speaking (and yes, they're also different from larp scenes in Germany and France). The presentation video focuses mostly on the French speaking scene. It has some amazing info, about unique playstyles, influences, humor, nuclear bunkers and organizing a 400 people French Swiss larp which is an amazing feat (compared to total population size, it's like 19,000 player Mythodea or 800 player Croatian LARP). Without further complications, here is the 30 minute video about larp in Switzerland...

As I mentioned in my previous post , I recorded some videos on this year's Utvrda Svjetlosti (The Fortress of Light). They've been edited and uploaded to Youtube. Enjoy! Scenes: A walkaround of the guest camp A walkaround of the fortress Fighting scenes from the 1vs1 tournament

Remember Claus Raasted from Petra's interview posted here in December? Here's his new thought provoking video "Larpification" from Nordic Larp Talks. Rest of the videos could be found here . They're short, and though they don't have much to do with LARP in Croatia, they're a great and informative thing to watch for any LARPer, anywhere.

One week after we filmed it, and after much effort by Vjeko, Terra Nova 2012 trailer is here. Enjoy!

Maksimir 50 was excellent! Too bad I wasn't on it :( Work got in the way. But this awesome video was made on it: so you can enjoy the epic atmosphere from your couch... Just like I did :) Hmm, epic atmosphere... from a park event of only a couple of hours? Yup, apparently they managed it. I made it on Krvomeđe the next day. No quests, just a battlegame, but it was nice to do some weapon practice and quick action games. And a tournament, of course. You can check all photos here . By the way, did I mention I started up a new Krvomeđe website ? Now I did :)